GAK, the huge areas required to provide wind farms or solar farms make the ideas untenable on a grand scale for many places on earth as does the lack of continuous sun and wind required to generate the power they intend to supply.

Even here in sunny Texas when I looked into solar power it would require an investment of $100k+ to acquire a suitable 220v~ 3 phase power generation system, it would then also necessitate utilization of every square inch of available space for such a system to work. If I invest that $100k (which BTW is 20% more than I paid for the 2 acres and 60X60' shop I have here) and somehow manage to find some lender who would advance funding at 0% interest the point I'd break even occurs a mere 32 yrs down the road.

The financial reality is that NO LENDER would advance such funds without an expectation of interest on their $$ which then adds at best a doubling of the payback over a simple 30yr note meaning the break even point would then come more than 60yrs in the future in the rosiest of scenarios imaginable.

The inherent issues I see with wind and solar power is that in every step of the process after the creation of the energy parasitic waste of the produced energy occurs which then minimizes the overall effectiveness of what's been generated.

Conversely, the huge amounts of power created through coal fired or nuclear energy plants do not require the same waste levels in conversion of the power to something usable and also don't require constantly degrading batteries to store the created energy as in the case of solar or wind power generation